Why we bother with historical claims to land outside of legal system?

[Anonymous]

It is one thing to call a goverment hypocritical and disbelieve whatever it might claim to honor which it had not before honored.

But why do we try to argue in the domain of war as if a system of rights and precedents had ever been honored?
Yes there is value to rules and respect for them, but that has to go 2 ways, and at some level it has to be enforced by practical reality.

Nelson A. Miles is being correct here in pointing out the hypocrisy of the Native American claim to the land being somehow above conquest when it was not so when they themselfs had conquered it.

This is not to so much challenge Sitting Bull's believe in the divine provenience of his God or his own story of history but that doesn't change reality that he had been conquered just as he had once conquered other. That his tribe was at this point in no position to realistically win the fight.

[Lliam]

This argument sounds like a justification for imperialism and colonization. It relies the "might is right" rationale. And it rejects the belief in honor.

[Asker]

@lliam
Can an imperialist creditably claim to be a victim of imperialism, if so at what point?

We may have agreed to end colonialism by the 1960s in which case doing it now would be a demonstration of trustworthiness. While I agree that is generally a good thing as is honor a necessary thing for peace.

At that time neither side had had any such agreement with each other and both as evidence of their not too distant wars were clearly untrustworthy beyond raw force.